Why we needed Ron Paul: SWAT team raids a food co-op

Around this time last year, Ron Paul was making a run for the Republican nomination for president on a platform of cutting the federal government down to size and restoring freedom.

One of the many issues on which he dissented from the Beltway oligarchy was on the issue of raw milk: It's none of the government's business if you want to drink milk that hasn't been pasteurized, said Ron.

I recall phoning Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum around that time and mentioning it to her. She noted that she and her siblings had grown up drinking raw milk. She even wondered out loud whether Paul might have a chance at winning the New Hampshire primary, which was held the following month.

He didn't, of course. The winner was John McCain, the self-styled "maverick" who constantly attacked Paul for having the nerve to challenge the Beltway consensus. But the only real maverick in that race was Ron Paul. Of all the Republican presidential contenders, he was the only one who really wanted to get government out of our lives.

In that regard, take a look at this blog entry. It was sent to me by one of my real (as opposed to "neo") conservative readers, Larry Farrell of the Gun Owners of New Jersey.

"On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized."

The crime, apparently, was failure to follow state agricultural regulations. The state had targeted the family food co-op after some non-institutional beef turned up at Oberlin College. The entry also notes that Amish farmers had been targeted by the state for selling raw milk, but apparently got off the hook because they were giving it away rather than selling it.

Here's a further update, including an e-mail that was sent out by the family that was raided.

Ohio is being run by Democrats at the moment, but the Republicans aren't any better on this sort of thing. The Bush administration actually defended the precedent in another case involving agriculture in Ohio. In the infamous Wickard v. Filburn case, the high court in 1942 ruled that a farmer by the name of Roscoe Filburn could be prevented by the federal government from growing wheat on his own land for his own consumption.

The court in Wickard ruled that Congress has powers under the Interstate Commerce Clause that are essentially unlimited. The Wickard case is among the worst Supreme Court decisions in history. There is not a conservative in America who is not aware of and outraged by that case.

The administration of George W. Bush had a chance to oppose this precedent in a recent case, Raich v. Ashcroft. But the Bush crowd defended the Wickard precedent vigorously and successfully and it stands to this day. As a result, a federal SWAT team has the power to conduct the same sort of food co-op raid that the state did in this case.

By the way, the idea of a SWAT team raiding a house on a food complaint seems so nutty that I actually found one blogger questioning whether this is one of those Internet hoaxes. But all indications are that it's not a hoax. The state really did point guns at people for unauthorized sale of food.

Another interesting facet of this case is that if you follow some of the links, you will see that the co-op in question caters to both right-wing Christian fundamentalists and left-wing college students. That's the sort of cooperation that can occur in a free country.